Matt Brammeier has played key roles in countless victories down through the years and taken some nice wins himself. The four-time Irish national road race champion has spoken to stickybottle about perspective, the month from hell, how he reckons Aqua Blue Sport can win big and what he would like to do when he eventually calls time on his career.
By Brian Canty
Matt Brammeier has revealed the extent of the horror of the last month after his wife Nikki suffered dreadful injuries in a crash at the European Cyclocross Championships in France.
The multiple British national champion and Olympian came down in a crash seconds after the start and suffered severe concussion as well as significant cuts and bruises.
She’s back on her feet again and slowly getting back into structured training but Brammeier feared her career could have been over.
Advertisement
“The last month has been a bit of a nightmare with Nikki crashing, obviously, but she’s alright,” the four-time Irish national road race champion said.
“She’s coming around and getting her health back but it was a bit of a grim one. It wasn’t one to look back on with any positivity.
“To see someone you care about with her face smashed up, initially I thought it was just superficial stuff and I thought ‘that’ll heal and she’ll be fine’ but the days and weeks after when the concussions started to come out was the scary stuff.
“When she couldn’t face anyone that’s when you knew it was worrying and when you see almost the personality changing as well…
“It’s all back now to where she was before because we got some good advice and dealt with it properly.
“But it wasn’t nice to see and a lot of the time I couldn’t do anything for her. I’m there trying to help and put her out of pain but you can’t really do anything and that was probably the worst part.”
Matt's wife Nikki is one of the top female riders in the world but not even she is averse to the risks of top-level cycling. The Boels-Dolmen rider crashed hard in the European cyclocross championships in France last month and suffered some very serious injuries. She has no definite idea of when she will be back racing.
For the last weeks it’s been a very slow and gradual process of rebuilding confidence as well as meeting the best medical personnel to help deal with the concussion.
“After the crash we headed back up to Nikki’s team hospital in Holland and she had some tests there and saw the doctors and they checked her out again.
“Then she just wanted to get home so we got home to the UK and saw some more specialists.
“Now we’ve got this concussion specialist in Birmingham whose worked with the English football and cricket teams and he assessed her and gave us loads of advice on recovery and returning which was really helpful.”
Needless to say, his own training was reduced to zero. Not that he was complaining.
“I wasn’t planning to be on my bike anyway, it was more about having a rest so it was alright. It still wasn’t the best way to spend your break.
“Sometimes these crashes make you think twice and especially after the crashes I’ve had in my career.
“But you have to think about it logically and the risk of crashing; it’s a dangerous sport, we all know that but the risk of crashing is always the same.
“It was the same last month and it’ll be the same next week as well. It doesn’t really change anything.
“In one way it makes you a little bit safer because you might be a little more cautious but of course you can’t dwell on it.
“She’ll be nervous her first race back but the risk won’t be any higher than it was.”
Matt is never too far away from his other half and regularly travels around Europe to watch her race. He was there in France last month when she crashed and he has been one of the really big influences on her career.
Nikki is hoping to return for Christmas, though there is no definite date as to when she might be ready to pin numbers back on again.
“From the advice, she’s hopeful she can be back racing by Christmas but what condition she’ll be in is another thing.
“She wants to focus on the Worlds again and that was always her main goal.
“I think it could have been the end of her season - or even her career, so any race she gets to do is a bonus.”
Related News
It’s been a hectic number of months for Matt himself and with a move to Aqua Blue Sport being confirmed he has other matters to occupy his mind.
He’s no longer the care-free early 20s rider he used to be, but a more seasoned, all-rounder who still feels he has years in him yet.
“I’m trying to get back into a bit of training now and I’ve been riding just over a week,” he said.
“After the crash (in the Tour of Utah) last year I started working again to get my shit back together and that was October 2015.
“This year I didn’t finish until the end of October so it was more than a 12-month season. A long story short is I was pretty fucked so I took a decent break but I’m back into it.”
Joining a new team is nothing new for the 31-year old who has raced for HTC-Highroad, OmegaPharma-QuickStep, Champion Systems, Synergy Baku and most recently, Dimension Data.
Reporting for duty: Brammeier at work on an epic stage four of the Tour of Qatar this year where teammate Edvald Boasson Hagen lost the race lead after a late double-puncture but Mark Cavendish (also a teammate) took the jersey by two seconds.
“I enjoyed my time with them,” he said of his tenure at Dimension Data.
“I got on well with almost everyone there. They’re one of the best teams I’ve been on and I had two really good years.
“I was kind of sad I couldn’t stay but the team had other ideas. Having said that, I’m excited to be part of a new thing next year and a change is always good.”
He believes his new team has the potential to win races, though warned that might not happen straight away.
“We definitely have the riders and the talent to win races and I’ve said that from the start but a lot of it will come down to how well the team clicks.
“We can’t expect to just rock up at the first race and start winning. It might take a few races or weeks or months but we definitely have the team to win.”
His own role is yet to be clearly defined, as is the race programme, but he knows what he can deliver.
“I think I’m one of the guys in the team with a bit more experience,” he said looking ahead to getting racing with Aqua Blue Sport.
“So I’ll probably be a bit of a road captain in some races, depending on who’s there.
“I’ll be trying to help with the lead-outs and the sprints. We have quite a fast team and I’ve raced quite a lot with some pretty good sprinters.
"So I know where to be and what to do most of the time, so maybe I can be the guy who relays that onto the others.
Brammeier managed to infiltrate a number of breakaways this year but his role in Dimension Data for Quebeka was actually very much consigned to helping control the breaks - something he is more than willing to do again next season with Aqua Blue Sport.
“There’s less riders on the team so it’ll make it easier to click and gel as a group,” he said of the 16-rider roster.
“In the past, you always had a team within a team that clicks well together most of the time.
“And you’re the same group of guys going around winning races and getting good results.
“With HTC we had that with the whole team and we won almost everything because of that.
“This year it’s a small group and it’s a new project and everyone’s in there from the start. It should be exciting.”
The day will eventually come when he and Nikki retire and though he hopes that day is not for a while yet, he’s not letting the grass grow under his feet.
He’s already a qualified cycling coach with the British Cycling Academy while from his base in Girona, Spain, he’s started a small venture that delivers high-end bike tours; Condreu.cc.
“I’m not one to wait around and expect things to come my way; this sport doesn’t do that unless you’re in the absolute minority of Grand Tour winners.
“I know cycling is where I want to be and I see myself being involved in the sport for a long time to come.
“I often have ideas in my spare time but just recently I've started to get up off my arse and bring fruit to those ideas.”
Topics
